CAVAN NATIVE Leona Maguire climbed the leaderboard to sit just outside the top 20 after her second round at the LPGA Tour’s Marathon Classic.
Maguire carded a 68 to now lie just seven shots off leader Nasa Hataoka of Japan.
Stephanie Meadow will sit out the weekend action after she followed up a first round of 74 with the same score yesterday.
Hataoka drained four straight birdies on the back nine en route to a 69 to maintain a two-shot lead.
After opening with a sizzling 10-under 61, Hataoka delivered a more mixed round on Friday with six birdies and four bogeys to get to 12-under overall at the Highland Meadows Golf Club in Ohio. She missed five greens after hitting all 18 on Thursday.
“My shots were not as good as yesterday,” she said. “I didn’t have that many chances. I had a lot of problems, but I was able to fix that for the last part and bring it back up.”
She will take a two stroke lead over American Mina Harigae into the third round of the $2 million tournament which pays the winner $300,000.
